Tuesday, 27 June 2017

Power Pressure Cooker XL Cookbook - Vanessa Olsen

I am
not a lover of pressure cookers. My earliest memory of them is as a kid and
every Sunday the evening meal would be cooked using a loud and dangerous stove
top pressure cooker. The food would have no colour and definitely no taste. My
father warned us to never touch or go near it because it could go off like a
bomb if we raised the lid. I saw this book and just had to take a look because
I couldn’t believe that there could possibly be two-hundred recipes for one of
these horrid machines. After reading this recipe book, Ms. Olsen has changed my
mind about pressure cooking and I think I may be purchasing one like is used in
the book in the near future.

This
book is based on the Power Pressure Cooker XL which, where I live, is $120 and
that is probably a higher price because things are quite expensive here. The
author does provide information about how to gear the recipe towards other
types of pressure cookers if you don’t own this particular kind. There are
recipes for everything in this book, from breakfast to snacks, and it’s quite
unbelievable that so many things can come from this piece of equipment. I took
a week to try some of the recipes that caught my eye using a stovetop pressure
cooker and, I have to say, they turned out quite well. There is a lemon poppy
seed cake recipe that tastes just like my husband’s grandmother’s cake. I also
made a huge pot of clam chowder that was to die for.There were some recipes that didn’t turn out
so well but I think that was due to my own mistakes and not the recipe itself.
Boiling eggs is not something I will be using the cooker for since I never
found that they came out the way I wanted them to.

Ms.
Olsen starts the book with a history of the pressure cooker which is actually
quite interesting. I never imagined that it has been around for as long as it
has been. She then gives lots of information about how to use this type of
pressure cooker and it was very helpful. At first I thought the whole book was
very much like an infomercial but it is so well set up and easy to use that I
quickly fell in love with the book. The recipes are easy to read and understand
and the step-by-step process makes them easy to carry out. There is something
for everyone here and this is a great book to have, especially if you’re not
comfortable with pressure cookers. I do wish there were pictures which, for me,
are key to a cook book but overall, this is a great book to add to my
collection.

I read
it on my ereader and it formatted perfectly. The cover relates to the topic and
draws the eye. Excellent!